Andy Baio lives here

419 Scammer Gets Honest

I just received a very unusual, and refreshingly candid, message from a known scammer in Senegal. It started with a standard introduction to a 419 scam early this morning.

From: jenifergoodluck (Your Big Fool) <cynthiawilliam5@yahoo.com>

Reply-to: jenifer.dagba@yahoo.com

Date: Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:11 AM

Subject: Hello My Dear one

Hello My Dear one

How are you and how is your work? i hope that all is well with you, My name is miss Jenifer , i know that you may be suprise how i get your email, i got your email today when i was browsing looking for honest partner,then i feel to drop this few line to you , and i will like you to contact me through my email so that we can know each other and exchange our pictures, and we maybecome partner.

Remember the distance does not matter what matters is the love we share with each other. i am waiting to hear from you soon.

kiss regards Miss Jenifer

About an hour later, I received a very unusual followup.

From: jenifergoodluck (Your Big Fool) <cynthiawilliam5@yahoo.com>

Reply-to: jenifer.dagba@yahoo.com

Date: Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:11 AM

Subject: You Owe Me

Since you haven’t fallen for my stupid scam letter let me go ahead and be up front with you.

Because I am a Nigerian, you owe me something. The fact that my decadent forefathers sold their neighbors and relatives into slavery means that you owe me a lot of money, especially if you are white. I will accept $1000 USD from you per month for the next 12 months. That will settle your debt towards me that was created by our forefathers.

Moreover, it is imperative that you begin to acknowledge my inherited right to steal and be corrupt without oppression from anybody’s legal system. I am entitled to instant riches at the expense of everyone outside West Africa.

This starts with you, my friend, so start paying up now by Western Union.

As much as I’d like to think Jenifer had a nervous breakdown within the hour, it’s clear that it’s a different author. The writing style is completely different and the scammer’s from Senegal, not Nigeria.

I’m guessing an angry recipient hacked her Yahoo! Mail account and sent out the second message to discredit her. Any other theories? I replied to the email to get more details, but I don’t expect a response.

well, it wasn’t scam, but some weeks ago I was pretty surprised to find a russian LOLcat image-spam-mail in my filter. There’s still some innovation ahead in mass-emailing! (Other thing: I seem to get more spam, where the sender didn’t even bother to fill in the generic stuff, sending raw unprocessed templates, “DIY spam”-style)

I think I agree with you, Andy – the tone is sarcastic, and places the blame for current poverty in Africa squarely on the shoulders of the black forefathers, present black attitudes etc. Thus there is no reason it would make a white person feel guilty, so a hack attack makes much more sense than any sort of ‘new angle’ by scammers.

So how does this whole “reparations” thing work? You pay Jennifer in twelve easy $1,000 installments, and then when you’re done you get some sort of certificate, or hand stamp, or something, that says you’re all square?

If this signet ring is good for all of Africa, I’d say go for it. But check the fine print. It might apply only to Nigeria.

The biggest question I would ask is in the “TO:” section of the email, was it written solely to you, or were there a large number of addresses listed there?

I’m asking because I would think that possibly this happened because instead of BCC(ing) everyone so that it appeared that you were the sole recipient, he put everyone’s address in the CC, and all someone had to was hit Reply to All. Afterall how difficult is it to make it appear that your email comes from the sender.

Why would someone do this? I can only speculate but it is pretty funny.

This isn’t too uncommon. Not all scambaiters interact with the scammers that much. Some just phish their email info and then warn other people, maybe mess with the scammer and their contacts, etc. For example, give these combos a try:

The problem is, these people don’t use the same account for long (both because some people doing this send emails from their accounts without deleting the sent mail record, or else they read new mail without marking it as new again). They also just have to cycle through new ones after a while to keep it fresh.